Skip to main content

Eulogy (part 1)

My father spent the last few years of his life on the streets of San Jose, homeless. He separated from his wife. He refused to take medication that would’ve helped him deal with being Bipolar. He refused help and handouts. His driving force for living another day was securing my inheritance and ultimately his legacy. He lost most of his grip on reality at that time, but still very much brilliant and majestic. My aunt and uncles found him once and had him admitted into a home for mental patients. He was out processed shortly after, because the doctors and other caregivers could find no insanity in him whatsoever. He was described as charming and engaging. And so he returned to the streets of San Jose, a prince.

I flew out to San Jose when I was notified of his death. I walked the streets where he roamed and ruled, my father the prince. I sensed his charm and majesty as I stood in the place where he drew his last breath. Equally I felt his pain and failure as I wondered what was going through his mind that night as he waited to die on the sidewalk. In his wallet, two dollars and five dimes, hardly the inheritance he expected to leave for me. I wish he knew that I didn’t give a damn about the money. He wouldn’t accept that and for the longest, I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until he died, that I finally understood why what he would leave for me was so important to him. He was worried about his legacy. How would I remember him? Would I honor him? I felt anger as I wondered why he didn’t want to be rescued. Why didn’t he humble himself and ask for help? But I guess all royalty struggles with asking for charity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 19: Write in Someone Else’s Voice

The Coward The boy’s voice awakened the man.   He found shelter in the abandoned school, in what was once, his school, his office.   Eleven, twelve, and thirteen year old students once ran down those halls, hurrying to their classes, hurrying to his English class. Now since the incident, no children survived that massacre.   That thought made the man shake with fear until he drifted off to sleep.   So when the man heard the boy’s voice screaming “Help Me!, Please Help Me!”   it shook the man from his sleep.   The man laid still.   His heart pounded as he waited to hear boy again.   “Help me! Please Somebody!” The man heard the boy loud and clear.   He could not pretend it was some animal or dream.   He knew it was a boy. And it paralyzed him.   The man clutched his knees to his chest and tucked his chin.   He took slow deep breaths, silent breaths, hoping the boy would believe he was on his own, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Force of Divorce (Part 3)

If we as adults experience this horrific effect of the force of divorce, how much more do our children ache and groan from an unreachable wound? A wound that will fester and spread an infection, if at some point they never get healing. Even though I was blessed with my period of beforeness, the force of divorce crashed down on my little life, sending the foundation of everything I held as stable and true into a violent whirlwind. And I was one of the “lucky” ones, by the our society’s perspective. I was never physically abused by my father; never had to sleep under the bed at night for fear of what the night would bring. I was swept away in the middle of the night by my mother and a priest who rushed us to the airport. Somehow my dad caught up with us and I remember he had one of my arms and my mom had the other both of them pulling me in opposite directions. How about that for a visual of a broken family? My mother won the tug of war and I boarded an airplane...
Post a Comment
Read more

She Knew Me. (My Tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou)

I didn't know her as one knows a neighbor a relative or a friend she was not in my list of contacts or photographs or yearbooks of a time long ago no, i did not know her but she knew me she definitely knew me she knew my pain, my struggle her words, songs, poetry they checked my pulse gauged my temperature measured my resolve her suffering leveled my consciousness she was quite acquainted with joy, pain silence, sound, standing, dancing stillness and marching on she defied invisibility and found her place centerstage I loved her for it no, I did not know Dr. Maya Angelou but she knew me she definitely knew me.
Post a Comment
Read more